Welcome to “District 1,” the first stop on The Panem Companion Victory Tour! To celebrate the publication of V. Arrow’s new guide to the trilogy, we’ve teamed up with Smart Pop Books to bring you an exclusive District 1-themed excerpt from the book. Smart Pop Books has also given us a copy to give away to one of YOU, so be sure to enter our contest after you read the excerpt.

The Victory Tour will be stopping by 12 other websites (or “districts”) over the course of the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for more excerpts and more chances to win a copy!

You can read our review of The Panem Companionhere. We also interviewed V. Arrow on Episode 86 of the show, if you’d like to learn more about the book’s inception and development.

District 1 – Excerpt from The Panem Companion by V. Arrow

“Names in Panem, like any names, have meaning beyond their linguistic origins. They also reflect the culture they come from, and the culture of the parents that choose them.

“One interesting result of the isolation of each district and its culture in Panem—as well as the further separations we see within individual districts, between district specialty classes and merchant classes—is the variation in naming practices. Although each individual name in the series has its own potentially meaningful peculiarities, we also see similarities in the names of people who share the same district origin—and stark differences between naming practices in different districts. Those who live in the Capitol—and a few key characters from Career districts who sympathize with Capitol ideals—have names derived from Roman history; characters from the districts have names related to their districts’ specialties or elements of nature. Young girls, in particular, are all named for flowers, while adult characters from the Hob have largely proprietary names that come from contemporary phrases, songs, or nursery rhymes—holdovers in Panem from our own culture, perhaps.”

Panem Names glossary excerpt:

Glimmer, District 1 Tribute in the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games

“To glimmer is to shine faintly or unsteadily; to give off a subdued unsteady reflection; to appear indistinctly with a faintly luminous quality. This name suggeststhe District 1 specialty of luxury goods but may also reflect both Glimmer’sbeauty and her early death in the Games.”

Gloss, District 1 Tribute in the Quarter Quell

“In the verb form, to gloss is to make attractive or acceptable by deception or superficial treatment; the noun form means a surface shininess or luster; a cosmetic that adds shine or luster; a superficially or deceptively attractive appearance. Both definitions seem appropriate to the popular Career from District 1, and suggest not only District 1’s luxury goods specialty but also the brutality that lies beneath the Career tributes’ surface appearances. A gloss can also be a brief notation explaining the meaning of a word or wording in a text, suggesting perhaps that Gloss’ characterization provides a brief explanation of the culture of Careers or of victors.”

As we mentioned above, we have one copy of The Panem Companion to give away (thank you, Smart Pop Books)! Here’s how you can win:

1. Visit the Smart Pop Books website and look at the Panem Companion chapter titles: http://www.smartpopbooks.com/book/the-panem-companion
2. Decide which chapter looks the most interesting to you.
3. Fill out the form below! (Make sure you read all the contest guidelines first.)